Excerpts from "Jacobson's Organ:
and the remarkable nature of smell"
by Lyall Watson
pg 3
Knowing the names of things gives us power over them : the power to isolate them from nature. This seperation remains artificial but also extraodinarily useful, making it possible for us to set the trees aside for a moment and concentrate instead on the composition and coexistance of the forest. Labelling is an essential first step in coming to temrs with ecology, and Linnaeus, in his fever to catalog all of existance, applied his art even to the elusive world of smells, scents and stenches. There were, he decided seven major classes of odour, rnaging from the pleasant to the unpleasant, from those he described as 'kindly and desirable to our nerves and even to life itself' to those that were patendly 'repellent to life'. [115]
Linnaeus published Odores medicamentorum in 1752 and there have been dozens of attempts during the last two and a half centuries to refine this system, approaching it from the vantage points of psychology, chemistry, physiology, and perfumery. Some of these refinements are cenvenient for cosmetic chemists and those working inth efragerence industry, but even the most sophisticated new taxonomies are unsatisfactory and inconsistent in the end. They founder on the accidental nature of most smells and on the lack of a speciliazed vocabulary for the act of smelling in any language. [115]
There is no semantic tradition, no critical study of the origin and function of words used to describe smells in any country, and no learning process in an culture assigned specifically to the sense of smell. so I find myself returning, time and smell again, to the sense of classification provided by the man whom novelist John Fowles calls 'The Great Warehouse Clerk of Nature'. [57] And finding solace even a surprising new depth of meaning in the resonant succession of Fragrantes (fragrant), Hircinus (goaty), Ambrosiacos (ambrosial), Tetros (foul), Nauseosos (nauseating), Aromaticos (Aromatic) and Alliaceos (garlicky).
pg5
In the Andaman islands, the Ongee people consider smell not as an isolated sense, but as a fundamental cosmic principle. For them, odour is the source of personal identity. It produces life and causes death. When Ongee - or anyone in modern Japan - refer to 'me', they put their forefinger on the tip of their nose. That is where the spirit residesm and too much or too little of it can cause problems. A healthy person is one who as their smell 'tied tightly'. Loosing your odour entirely can kill you. [29]
The idea of life and breath and spirit nad smell are intertwined in many cultures. Some Mexicans still believe that the snmell of a man's breath is more responsible for conception than his semen is. And in the Andamans, they tie everything very tidily together in a tradition of communication by smell which they call mineyalange, which literlaly means 'to remember'.
Bibliography:
29. Classen, Constance. Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures. London: Routledge (1995).
57. Fowles, John. 'Seeing nature whole.' Harpers, November, p.49(1979).
115. Linneaus, Carolus. 'Odores medicamentorum'. Amoenitates Academicae, 3, 183 (1756.)
Fragrantes
For this group of odours, Linnaeus specified floral sources such as jasmine, saffron and wild lilme - all of which are distinctly perfumed.
But there is something in his description which suggests that, as a Latin scholar, he was aware of possible confussion between the verbal roots fragrare ('to smell'), and flagrare ('to burn') and felt that both were appropriate.
Saffron is not just fragrant, but also fiery, glorious, even gaudy, giving Alexander pope good reason to describe the fleet in which Odysseus set sail as 'a cruise of fragrance, formed of burnished gold'.
Saffron is a crocus, Crocus is the Chaldean name for the iris family. And Iris is the Greek messenger of the gods.
There is more than enough biological and mythological coincidence in all this to keep a classical scholar happy and augur well for the evolution of a sense able to appreciate something both bright and beautiful.
Hirconos
Orchids are pollinated almost entirely by insects, specializing very often in just one species which they attract by a customized scent. Some moth orchids hedge their bets, offering lily-of-the-valley by day and attar-of-roses after dark.
For reasons which remain mysterious, many orchid scents are attractive also to ourselves, and their flowers can be persuaded to bloom in the greenhouses for over six months, hanging on in the hope of pollination. But those orchids which associate with flies descend to their level, with carrion calls and the stink of rotting meat.
Linnaeus singled out such a species as sources of the scents he called 'hircine', from the Latin hircus for 'he-goat'. He allied the rancid odours of cheese, sweat and urine with the lifestyle of the hardy animals who still have a reputation for wanton and licentious behaviour. 'The lust of the goat,' said William Blake, "is the bounty of God.'
Hence the goat-footed figure Pan, symbol of fertility and transformation, the hot-blooded patron of wild nature - and the shaggy source of widespread irrational behaviour or panic.
Ambrosiacos
Ambrosia lies at the heart of Linnaen thinking about scents and smells.
It has its roots in amber, something resinous, fragrant and attractive, known to the Greeks as elektron. when rubbed, it releases charged particles,who become regarded both as the elixir of life and as nourishment for the gods. Sappho sees it as a balmy drink, Homer as the food of the immortals. Milton's paradise is annointed by a deity whose 'dewy locks distilled ambrosia'. And everyone agrees that it is divine.
Linaeus is more down to earth. His paradise has Comus, the god of sensual pleasure, distributing ambrosial oils 'through the porch and inlet of every sense'. And he chooses to describe this group of odours as sweet and heavy fragnrances, redolent of musk. He sprinkles this term liberally about, setting up a little Oriental deer as Moschus; and condemning a garden of aromatic plants - germanders, geraniums, sages, mint, and mallows - to be for ever musky or moschatum.
But in the end, no bloom can compete with mushkas itself, with the golf-ball-sized pod which the Asian deer carries under the skin of its stomach. For more than five thousand years, this has been the manifestation of the gods, incorporated alike into perfume bases and the foundation of cathederals, so that both bodies might breathe out its bewitching odour.
It is still worth its weight in gold.
Tetros
Linnaeus was well aware of our olfactory confusion. Midway between desire and repulsion, he created a category of fragrances described as 'tetros', from the Latin word meaning that which can be offensive to the senses, or possibly even foul. 'Full of gross humours' was the euphemism of the time.
There is strong flavour of the social disapproval in all discussion of what odours belong here, making for some strange associations. So we find tomatoes and potatoes grouped together with opium poppies and belladonna, love apples and moon flowers in the same bed. Appropriate, perhaps, for a classification whose translations ranges from'polluted' through 'shameful' to 'obscene'.
Tetri may smell foul, but they sell well. The Devil always did have some of the best tangs.
But there is something grand, too, about the grouping, which gives pride of place to the doughty walnut: the tree and seed Linnaeus dubbed Juglans, from the glans of Jove and Jupiter's nut. There is no doubting the symbolism of its shape or the fact that the putrid smell of the kernel is produced by a chemical called juglone that is also antiseptic, herbicidal, and a very useful treatment for some tumours. You can't judge anything by its odour alone.
Nauseosos
This is it - the ultimate stench , a name for anything disgusting, loathsome, offensive and likely to put you off your food.
Linnaeus drew attention ot the Latin root nusea, originally applied to just seasickness, but soon spreading to anything of ill savour. He was an early supporter of homoeopathy, noticing that the odious and the highly toxic hellebore, when taken in minute quantities, was a remedy for pain and convulsion, the original 'hair of the dog'.
The ancients defined all things as having 'animal humours' and recommended them as a treatment for 'excitements'. And the excitable poet laureate John Dryden lost all his positions and pensions for frequently and unwisely describing those in power in England as nauseating.
The nature of things truly nauseating, ranges from 'the stench of an old sepulchre' to 'stale salt fish', but the most convenient source was a plant growing on the sandy plains of Afghanistan which produced a foul-smelling resinous gum, known locally as asa foetida.
But the botanical epitome of nauseosi are the South African stapelias. Their carrion stink attracks blowflies which becom so entranced with flowers looking like mould growing on rotting meat, that they lay eggs on them. One species compounds the gut-wrenching illusions by adding minute hairs that give the entire plant the appearance of seething with tiny flies.
You wouldn't dream of eating a stapelia. And that might be the whole point. . .
Aromaticos
To compliment 'fragrant' sources, Linnaeus created 'aromatic' ones from the Greek aroma - which encompasses the subtle, pervasive smells of all the spices. These have been an essence whose nobility is best released through smoke and fire, per fumar, producing perfumes.
'That which is set on fire' is incensed, offered to a god to flatter or inflame, turning gums, resins and essential oils into aromal breezes of the sort that might have pleased even Apollo.
'To spice' means to season or perfume, but a spice is also a species, a kind of citron, anise, cinnamon or clove waiting, in Alfred Tenneyson's words, 'to feel with summer spice the humming air.'
From victorious athletes to poets adorned with laurel wreaths, aromatic substances suffuse, adorn or crown our endeavours. In 1825 Michael Faraday discovered benzene in the gas rising from burning whale-oil lamps. Forty years later, the German chemist August Kekulé dreamt one night of a snake in whirling motion, swallowing its own tail. This vision inspired the work in which he not only solved the cyclic structure of benzene and other aromatic hydrocarbons, but also provided a theoretical basis for the whole of organic chemistry.
Alliaceos
Before Linnaeus, botany and medicine came down through the ages hand in hand. Then both arts became sciences and went their seperate ways. Botanists ignored the medicinal properties of plants, and the medicinal texts refused to consider herbal lore. But a few pants were so potent that they took root on boths sides of the modern divide.
One of these was garlic, the source of the antibiotic allium and the fungecide allicin, and in addition perhaps is the most mystically active and attractive bulb in the business. Garlic is a lily, with up to twenty edible cloves or bulbets packed with magical oils so penetrating that when a clove is rubbed on the soles of the feet, its odours are exhaled by the lungs.
Theophrastus tells of Greeks leaving gralic at the crossroads as supper for Hecatem three-headed goddess of the underworld. Homer has Odysseus take garlic to avoid being turned into a pig by Circe, the daughter of the sun. But anyone with garlic on their breath was forbidden to enter any of the temples of Cybele, the mistress of wild nature.
Today, the air of the entire Mediterranean is perfumed by people who eat gralic in food, drink it in wine, use it for asthma, chronic bronchitis and dropsy, even rubbing it on their skin to prevent suffering from the debilitating effects of the ill winds sirocco and simoom.
On these final pages, 'poorman's treacle' appears as the pinnacle of the Lynnean pyramid of odour-types, because though it may frighten crows and scare moles up ou of the ground, garlic is everyman's easiest and most interesting route to good health and fragrant well-being.
FUNGUS
Truffle Tuber melanosporum
PLANTS
Acacia Acacia sp.
Agrimony Agrimonia parviflora
Catnip Nepeta cataria
Common Poplar Populus euroamericana
European walnut Juglans regia
Garlic Allium sativum
Goldenrod Solidago ulmiflora
Laurel Laurus nobilis
Madagascar periwinkle Catharanthus roseus
Myrtles Myrtus communis
Norway spruce Picea abies
Onycha Cistus ladniferus
Pine Pinus sp.
Red Alder Alnus rubra
Rock cress Arabidopsis thaliana
Rosemary Rosmarinus officinalis
Sensitive mimosa Mimosa pudica
Sitka willow Salix sitchensis
St. John's wart Hypericum sp.
Subterranean clover Trifolium subterraneum
Sugar maple Acer saccharum
Tobacco Nicotiana tabacum
Yarrow Achillea millefolium
INSECTS
Carpenter Ant Camponotus socius
Silkworm moth Bombyx mori
Tent catepillar Malacosoma californica
SPIDER
Bolas Spider Mastophora sp.
CRUSTACEAN
Brime Shrimp Artemis salina
FISH
European eel Anguilla anguilla
European minnow Phoxinus phoxinus
Spotted dogfish Scyliorhinus caniculus
White-tip shark Triaenodon obesus
AMPHIBIANS
African clawed toad Xenopus laevis
American leopard frog Rena pipiens
Common toad Bufo bufo
European common frog Rana temporaria
Mexican toad Bufo valliceps
Red-bellied newt Taricha rivularis
Spotted chorus frog Psuedacris clarkii
Strecker's chorus frog Psuedacris streckeri
REPTILES
Plains garter snake Thamnophis radix
Western whiptail lizard Cnemidophorus tigris
BIRDS
Anartic snow petrel Pagodroma nivea
European starling Sturnus vulgaris
Greater shearwater Puffinus gravis
Turkey vulture Cathartes aura
Wilson's petrel Oceanites oceanicus
MAMMALS
African lion Panthera leo
Black rhinoceros Diceros bicornis
Boar Sus scrofa
Bonobo Pan paniscus
Brown hyena Hyaena brunnea
Chimpanzee Pan troglodytes
Civet Viverra sp.
Common vampire bat Desmodus rotundus
Crested 'rat' Lophiomys imhausi
European badger Meles meles
European hedgehog Erinaceus europaeus
European rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus
European weasel Mustela nivalis
Golden hamster Mesocricetus auratus
Green acouchi Myoprocta prattii
Hippopotamus Hippopotamus amphibius
House mouse Mus musculus
Indian elephant Elephans maximus
Jaguar Pantera onca
Mongolian gerbil Meriones unguiculatus
Mule Deer Odocoiles hemionus
Musk deer Moschus moschiferus
Prairie vole Microtus ochrogaster
Pronghorn Antilocapra americana
Ring-tailed lemur Lemur catta
Roe deer Capreolus capreolus
Short-tailed vole Microtus agrestis
Spiny mouse Acomys caharinus
Spotted hyena Crocuta crocuta
Springbrook Antidorcas marsupialis
Striped skunk Mephitis mephitis
Sugar glider Petaurus breviceps
Water vole Arvicola terrestris
Weddell seal Leptonychotes weddelli
White-bellied shrew Suncus murinus
White-tailed deer Odocoiles virginianus